Highlights
Store sales are trendless leading up to the big last week of the month, according to Redbook whose same-store index remains flat at a year-on-year plus 1.8 percent. Though retailers are rolling out holiday deals earlier than ever, Redbook says that consumers are nevertheless sitting tight for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. The report notes that about one quarter of November's sales will be loaded into the month's final week.

Definition
A weekly measure of comparable store sales at chain stores, discounters, and department stores. It is a less consistent indicator of retail sales than the weekly ICSC-Goldman index. It is also calculated differently than other indicators. For instance, figures for the first week of the month are compared with the average for the entire previous month. When two weeks are available, then these are compared with the average for the previous month, and so on through the month. It might be more useful to compare year-over-year figures since these are indeed compared to the comparable week a year ago. This index is correlated with the general merchandise portion of retail sales covering about 10 percent of total retail sales.
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